What a fine Wisconsin-winter-weather welcome home I had this morning! When I landed at Mitchel late yesterday afternoon, I could tell it was warm out, and we saw on the news last evening that Milwaukee missed the record high temperature for yesterday’s date by one degree. And that’s a thin degree, on Herr Fahrenheit’s scale, not one of those wide degrees cooked up later by Prof Celsius. By the time the sun came up this morning, however, it was well below freezing, the wind was stiff, and snow was falling. Wow! Winter is back!
Anyway, the snow petered out by about 8am, so I headed out to see if anyone was up and about in Estabrook Park. I sure wish this little cutie, the first winter wren we’ve seen in a while, had waited for a nice sunny day to show its face, but I’ll take what I can get and like it!
As luck would have it, there was a brief break in the clouds by the time I reached the pond, and it lit up this female cardinal perfectly. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t let me sneak a bit to my right to get that little stick out from in front of her face, but not every picture has to be a portrait. Right?
Soon after the cardinal picture, the clouds drifted back across the sun, and a little red squirrel had taken her place to check on that walnut. As we’ve seen before, the nut was probably wedged into that spot by a red squirrel and quite possibly this one.
Finally, and I was thrilled even to reach four presentable pictures today, here’s a black-capped chickadee that had just finished eating a sunflower seed out of its shell and was now shouting about something that I couldn’t quite make out.
I see that we are forecast to have more sun, more cold, and less wind tomorrow morning, and that sounds good to me.
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 